This is – I can say with some confidence – one of the very greatest, loveliest, funniest, and wisest books you've never read. For this reason, I always give it as a gift – no one's already read it, everyone loves it, and Fischer emphatically deserves the support.
By turns screamingly funny, Orwellianly absurd, poignant, sweet, sobering, tragic, and hopeful, this book does it all – and, even more, does it in a pitch-perfect voice that effortlessly inhabits every line. (The unfailing, unfailingly wonderful, tone is itself a minor miracle.) Certain ideas and images stay with you over the years: the morbid-yet-amused fatalism of the workers in the state-run factory; the yearning, both sweet and sad, of Gyuri for humble things like love and a little normalcy – his fantasy, at once pathetic and out-of-reach, of being a street sweeper someplace sane like London, how great it would be to be out under the sky everyday, and no Communism; the inexorable, lurking tragedy of the doomed uprising in the streets of Budapest in 1956; the father's romantic advice to Gyuri "not to worry – dry spells never last".
I was first made to read this by the best-read person (and most discerning reader) I know. Four years later, I picked up a second-hand copy in a London market for the re-reading. When I got to the end, without even putting it down, I turned back to the beginning and re-re-read it. I'd never done that before, and haven't since. (If you read some of the reviews here, you'll see I wasn't the only one.) All three times through, I found myself laughing stupidly and sobbing pitiably – sometimes into the same page.
Saying this is going to ruin my secret silver bullet gift trick, I suppose, but: There's absolutely nothing difficult or highbrow about this book. It's just a gem, nearly perfect and perfectly loveable. Read it today.
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